Vignettes on 9/11

Photo by Axel Houmadi on Unsplash

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my world was so bright I had to wear shades. Really. I had to wear sunglasses that morning.

I was 25 years old. I strolled out of my apartment in my new shoes and new slacks. I got into my new car, opened the sunroof, and turned up some dc Talk on the stereo. I picked up a breakfast sandwich and a coffee at the place around the corner. I drove to my new job at the place where I dreamed of working since I was 18 years old. I had a quick daydream about all the new things I would do at that job that would lead to more new things that I would do for the rest of the long life that stretched out before me. I thought of the new crush I had on a girl I just met. I imagined how she and I could fall into new love that would lead to a new family.

I took a bite of croissant. The wind blew through my hair.

I felt like the light of heaven was shining down through my open sunroof and filling my life with hopeful moxie.

I sang along with dc Talk: “I want to be in the light as you are in the light/I want to shine like the stars in the heaven/O Lord be my light and be my salvation/‘cause all I want is to be in the light.”

When I got to work, someone on the sidewalk told me that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s too bad.”

Munching my breakfast, I didn’t even slow down to hear more. I imagined that some amateur pilot flew his Cessna into one of the towers.

When I got to my windowless office, I turned on my radio.

…

When I was a kid, one wall of my bedroom had two side-by-side windows that faced west. On some afternoons, so much sunlight came through those windows that every white surface in the room could burn the eyes.

I was playing in my bedroom on one of those bright afternoons. I happened to look up at the windows in time to see a sight that I will never forget.

A black wall of cloud closed over the blue sky as quickly as my mom drawing the curtain across my windows at bedtime. In 30 seconds, the world went from clear and sunny to so dark that the street lights came on. In 30 seconds, my room went from bright as morning to dark as night.

I thought the world was ending.

“Jesus!” I gasped. “Please save me!”

…

I sat alone in my windowless office, listening to news reports from New York on the morning of 9/11.

I didn’t stay there for long. I went home and turned on the TV in time to watch the towers collapse. The clouds of dust and smoke swallowing up buildings and people and streets reminded me of that black wall cloud that swallowed up the sky when I was a kid.

I thought the world was ending.

And it was.

Before 9/11, we thought the world had certain rules, certain safe places, certain certainties. We built our lives on those assumptions about how the world is set up and how it works.

9/11 turned buildings, planes, and people into dust and turned our assumptions about the world into dust with them.

I started 9/11 basking in blue sky and sunshine; I ended it bending before a wall cloud of dread.

I started 9/11 with a future; I ended it with only a past.

I swaggered into 9/11; I staggered out of it.

…

The world born on 9/11 is many times worse than the day itself.

The terrorists of 9/11 did not mean to just destroy buildings and take lives; they meant to shred the very fabric of society itself. They meant to start a chain reaction that would deliver death to every part of the world.

They succeeded.

We reacted the way they expected us to react. And our reaction let loose 20 years of hatred, paranoia, rage, and violence.

We lost count of the dead a long time ago, but we know it is many times the number of people who died on 9/11.

Twenty years on, we are literally making each other sick.

Twenty years on, we are literally tearing ourselves apart.

Call the terrorists evil, but that does not mean that they didn’t know us better than we know ourselves.

Call the terrorists evil, but I wonder if they did not succeed in turning us into terrorists, too.

Have you been online since 2001? Have you been on social media since then? Have you watched the news on cable TV?

Americans are using terror on each other.

Americans justify things like cheating and shaming and trolling and violence–all acts of terror they mean to cower, dominate, silence, or slay their opponents–in the name of country or God or some perverted justice.

Nobody–and I mean nobody–is innocent. “Left” or “right.”

“…there is to distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Letter to the Romans 3:22b-23).

Terrorists are “true believers” who are so sure that they are right (and that everyone else is wrong), they justify harassing and hurting everyone who is not on the side of “right.”

I stopped worrying about foreign terrorists a long time ago.

I am more likely to see a terrorist at church, among my Facebook friends, or volunteering in the community.

If I’m not careful, I may even see a terrorist in the mirror.

…

On 9/11, we talk a lot about honoring the dead.

I think it is time we start talking even more about honoring the living.

And I don’t just mean first responders and military service members.

If we want to be the opposite of the terrorists, we need to honor our neighbors. We need to honor the people on the other side of an issue or the other side of town or the other side of the tracks.

We need to honor the people we loathe because God does not loathe them; he loves them. He gave his only Son for them. And his Son told us that if we want to be his brothers and sisters, to be children of God along with God’s firstborn, we must be peacemakers (Gospel of Matthew 5:9).

Christians do what their Christ did and their Christ laid down his life–his needs, his power, his prerogative, his rights, his wishes–for the very people who were crucifying him!

This is the essence of Christianity.

It is also the way that we win.

Christians don’t kill their enemies; they love them to death or die trying.

Foolish?

Yes.

But Christians believe in a power that is greater than death itself. Christians believe in a power that is greater than military or political maneuvering. Christians believe in a power that is greater than outrage or shame.

Christians do not have to dominate or kill or shame their enemies. The power they would get from doing so is lame compared to the power of love and resurrection in which they put their full faith and hope.

We can honor neighbors, strangers, and enemies because we have nothing to fear of their power over us when we believe the power of God is in us.

…

Starting on 9/11, I knew I could no longer place my hope on anything in this world. That day, I found out that the things in this world that I thought were indestructible could burn and fall to the ground in seconds.

People turned to dust that day.

I remembered that I will, too.

Christians who grow over many years have more than one “conversion experience” in their lives. They can tell you about a day and a place where they “broke through” to a new level of faith or understanding.

My baptism on March 4, 1987, is one of those days.

Another is late April 1996, when I went to a weekend men’s conference and first felt the fire of God.

Another is Thanksgiving Day 1998, when I first felt the love of God in a physical and very real way.

And another is September 11, 2001, when I had nothing left on which to build my faith and hope than on God himself. That day, for the first time in my life, I really meant the words of the song we sang in church:

“My hope is built on nothing less/than Jesus’ blood and righteousness/I dare not trust the sweetest frame/But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name/On Christ the solid rock I stand/All other ground is sinking sand.”

…

What gospel can I preach to a 9/11 world?

To be honest, preaching seems like exactly the wrong response to 9/11.

9/11 preaches its own sermon in blood and fire and smoke. No words necessary. The events of the day make their own points.

One time, a group of faithful and patriotic people asked Jesus to give them a preview of the glory they thought would soon come.

Instead, Jesus told them that the unthinkable–the sum of all their fears–would fall on them like an atomic bomb. Everything on which they built their confidence and hope and pride would explode into burning bits until none of it was left.

What is a person who keeps his faith and loves his country to do with that?

Because, sooner or later, those words of Jesus will apply to every economy, every military, every nation, every religion–every power and principality–on Earth.

What–or who–do you trust?

If it’s not the “Son of Man,” I have bad news for you: It’s going away.

Sooner or later, it will crumble into rubble.

So does Jesus have any good news for us?

Only this: The righteous will go on to eternal life (Gospel of Matthew 25:46).

Which is another way of saying that God will make the world right so that those who are right in their hearts may live in it with joy and peace forever.

But that world is not the result of our economies, militaries, or politics. It will not come from the advances we make in science.

How will it come?

It will come when we who have plenty feed those who are hungry.

It will come when we who have more water than we need share it with those who can’t even buy a one cup of cold water.

It will come when we who have family and friends invite in those who are aliens, loners, and strangers.

It will come when we who have closets full of clothes share them with those who are naked.

It will come when we who are healthy and strong take care of those who are sick and vulnerable.

It will come when we who are free, powerful, and well-off advocate and work for those who are stuck in despair, poverty, or prison.

The world we all want to come–the world that our Christ promised–will come when we do these things.

How do I know this?

Because the Christ said that he comes to us as the hungry, thirsty, lonely, naked, sick, poor, stuck people we meet.

If we want to live with Christ in the world he promised, he told us how.

We don’t have to live in the 9/11 world.

But sometimes I wonder if most people would rather live in the 9/11 world than in the world the Christ is making for those who choose mercy.

…

They say that grief has five stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

When will we as a people admit that we are still grieving 9/11?

We never admitted it in the first place. We never owned up to our grief.

We are stuck in an endless cycle of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. We cannot seem to break through to acceptance.

…

I accept that life is not what I thought it was before 9/11.

The world is not what I thought it was.

God is not who I thought he was.

I am not who I thought I was.

All I found over the last 20 years was more that makes me less clear, less sure about myself and the world in which I live.

But good news: Faith grows where certainty falls and turns to ashes.

Thanks be to heaven: My God is not bullets and missiles, concrete and steel, gold coins and green paper.

Many deaths on 9/11 were tragic; the death of idolatry was not one of them.

Grace and peace.